Ex-cons

I was genuinely pleased to see someone gave Michael Vick a chance. From personal experience with ex-offenders I have taught in college, I know that having a felony record makes job hunting a nightmare. Just imagine what a boost Vick's story will be for this marginalized group. They can look at him and take heart, especially the males. All they have to do is get into really good shape--preliminary planning like playing football in a college setting and maybe being drafted by the NFL before being arrested would be helpful--and then upon release or parole there will be the opportunity for a job with benefits in the NFL. As long as the ex-con can make the franchise money, there is no limit to the possibilities. And what is even better is that this chance is not only for the nonviolent offenders. Heinous crimes like rape, murder, and egregious cruelty to animals do not make make the NFL nor the NBA squeamish. Fame and infamy are blurred in those worlds.
I can see it now. there will be a whole new area of nonprofit training programs in the prisons. Classes like "How to Turn Your Felony into Fasttrack Football" and "Creative Fiction in Sports Resume Writing" will be taught at maximum security institutions. Best of all, the society is finally achieving some real justice. Pulpits and political forums have been the venues for preaching that prisoners can be rehabilitated, so we should all be open to hiring ex-offenders. Practice has never followed the preaching closely until now. The benevolent NFL has stepped up to take the selfless lead.
I can hear the rallying cry: "We don't care what you've done/just so you can catch an' run!" And enrich the franchise, of course.

Six Weeks

It is already mid-August. How did that happen? Actually, time stood almost still for much of July for me. I had my right knee replaced on the first of July and it has been a rocky road since. I suffer from chronic depression and I am very driven to be the best student (or patient, in this case). That combination made me do everything the doctor and the physical therapist wanted me to do. The trouble is that I do not have any frame of reference. How healed should I be at 6 weeks post-op? The PT said I was doing very well and the doctor says the same when I see him, but are they just humoring me? The suspicion is counterproductive. I might as well bask in their praise and continue my efforts.
I am not working this fall. It will be the first semester since our move in March of 2000 that I will not be teaching or at least tutoring for over 20 hours a week. This should be another interesting journey.

Pain in the . . .

I have been dealing with chronic pain for a while now. I looked back at my daily calendars and realized this arthritic right knee has been giving me hell for about 2.5 years. The left one had orthoscopic surgery and some relief in 2003, but it too is painful again. I have had a run of poor luck with doctors. Several have hedged further surgery while offering ineffective half measures. That is another story, one that involves the bad mixture of medicine and a business model. The pain, however, has at least been a shadow in my life for a long time. If I am with people or on the phone, I get to forget it for some time. I also take Aleve and ibuprofen which take the edge off the aching. I have a fear that I will become my mother, bless her. She had issues, so I am not throwing blame her way. She did complain of aches and pains for about as long as I could remember. She is no longer physically with us, but her complaints and her managing to be ill for major functions, like weddings and Christmas and Tuesdays, are shadows in my own life. I therefore attempt not to bitch about my own pain. My children and husband might beg to differ, but I really try not to whine. I try so hard that I probably let myself suffer rather than admit to the problem and seek help. Of course this is way more complicated than I am expressing here. For instance, add to the mix that my 82 year old mother-in-law was still cutting her own grass up until this summer, that she grocery shopped on the way home from the hospital after having her 4th or 5th child of 8, and I feel like a wuss if I mention I am suffering from anything less than a major head trauma--and that better be an open wound to impress my ex-emergency room nurse husband.

Life is so interesting. I have fought depression for a couple of decades, and recently the various drugs have not helped much. Could it be the physical aches that constantly nag me? Hmmmm.

More to come, maybe solutions, but at least changes.

So, it's like this--I don't like my blog or much of anything else right now. There are the kids and grandkids and husband, but not much else is 0f interest. Maybe I will find my way out of the funk soon.

Socrates Don't Work Here

As I tried to settle in to Good Friday's solemn, sad, but hopeful afternoon, I made the mistake of checking my email and just glanced at a higher education news flash that appeared in the viewing window. A couple of groups, one a community college organization, are announcing a partnership with somebody in Africa to strengthen curriculum and improve job prep, blah blah blah. Having worked in community colleges for the past nine years, I can only laugh at the same old jargon. How about we just teach some concepts, allow the students to prepare themselves to be thinking adults, and then let them find their way in the work force? The idea of an apprenticeship or on the job training is anathema to higher ed now. Think of all that revenue out the window, or off the bottom line. Expectations at the college level have fallen to such a low that we might as well admit that thousands of the students at the Associate Degree level are only glorified high school graduates--finally--after two years of remedial work. They now might be able to understand a conversation with or decipher a note from their counterparts--the high school grads back in the middle of the previous century. I am guessing that an eighth grade graduate of the century before that may have had similar knowledge. When did we decide to relinquish opening minds and preparing critical thinkers to history and instead just train in technology, and not do that all so well? There are some amazing thinkers out there in their early adulthood, and they may have been exposed to some rigorous college courses, but the watered down pabulum available to so many college students today or else the desperate efforts to make up for wasted high school days does not make for an educated work force. Education is learning about how to learn and how to live life. Work is about training. Today's education system is confused and driven by the bottom line and teachers who fear for their jobs if they dare to think out loud. What a shame.
And don't get me started on the nationalization of education.

New Broom Sweeps Clean

I am not ok with all of the moves we have undertaken during our marriage. Saying that makes me feel like I am somehow betraying my husband. I could have stopped any one of the twenty minor and major changes of address if I had chosen to not allow it. Consequences would have ensued, and then I could have dealt with that. But much of my adult life has been my allowing life to happen to me. There were a couple of exceptions, like going back to graduate school. Use of those graduate degrees has been thwarted and I have allowed that to happen as well. That cannot have been good modeling for my children. I know choosing not to be proactive has not been healthy for me. I am also keenly aware that I am a product of every place I have been, of all the accumulated circumstances. By extension, not turning down one of those roads would have meant different results in me. I have been told that I should be grateful for all of my history because it has made me what I am today. That axiom only works if I am happy with what I am today.

I have been avoiding my blog. I have pretty much been avoiding my life the last couple of weeks. I would explain more except that 1) there is just too much, and 2) I really do not understand the funk myself.